In the related art, an artificial heart and lung and a blood circulation system for adjunctively circulating blood are widely used as necessary when a heart is stopped or is approximately stopped during or after surgery such as cardiac surgery.
As shown in FIG. 12, an artificial heart and lung apparatus (blood circulation system) 500 equipped with an artificial heart and lung in the related art includes a blood removal line 501; a reservoir 502; a blood line 603; a blood transfer line 504; a first blood transfer line 505; an artificial lung 506; and a second blood transfer line 507.
The blood removal line 501 transfers blood, which has been received from a vein of a patient (human body) P, to the reservoir 502. The blood removal line 501 is a tube formed of resin such as polyvinyl chloride.
The reservoir 502 includes a tank therein, and temporarily stores the transferred blood.
The blood transfer pump 504 transfers the blood stored in the reservoir 502 to the artificial lung 506 via the blood line 503 through which the reservoir 502 is connected to the blood transfer pump 504, and via the first blood transfer line 505 through which the blood transfer pump 504 is connected to the artificial lung 506. For example, a roller pump or a centrifugal pump is used as the blood transfer pump 504. The blood transfer pump 504 is controlled by a signal output from a blood transfer pump control unit 540.
The artificial lung 506 includes a hollow fiber membrane, a flat membrane, or the like having good gas permeability, and has the function of discharging carbon dioxide from and adding oxygen to blood.
The second blood transfer line 507 receives the blood, from which carbon dioxide has been discharged and to which oxygen has been added by the artificial lung 506, and transfers the blood to an artery of the patient P.
Advanced knowledge and techniques are required to operate the artificial heart and lung apparatus 500 with such a configuration. Typically, a clinical engineer adjusts a blood flow rate via a manual operation according to a doctor's instructions.
When adjusting the blood flow rate via a manual operation, the clinical engineer is required to adjust a blood flow rate in the blood removal line 501 by pinching the blood removal line 501 with a forceps while confirming the degree of removal of blood or an arterial pressure of the patient.
Since the clinical engineer adjusts the amount of discharge of the blood transfer pump by manually controlling the rotational speed of the blood transfer pump (roller pump, centrifugal pump, or the like) when adjusting the blood flow rate, a complex and advanced operation technique is required in addition to the adjustment of each line.
Patent Document 1 discloses technology to adjust a blood removal rate in which the blood removal line 501 is pinched and deformed to accurately and simply adjust the blood removal rate via an artificial heart and lung apparatus.
In order to adjust the flow rate of blood to be removed via the blood removal line 501, the artificial heart and lung apparatus disclosed in Patent Document 1 pinches and deforms the blood removal line 501 by operating a blood removal regulator 521, which includes a clamper formed of a pair of clamp members and a servo motor, via a blood removal regulator operation unit 520.
Patent Document 2 discloses technology in which a blood removal regulator control unit is linked with a blood transfer regulator control unit, a blood removal rate and a blood transfer rate are simultaneously controlled via operation of one of the control units, and thus a blood flow rate of an artificial heart and lung apparatus is efficiently adjusted.